I went to a meeting of Mercy for Animals last night, mostly for the promised vegan dinner (lentil sloppy joes which was incredibly delicious!) but also because the talk was about "Creating Peace through Vegetarianism." Many notable peace activists were vegetarian or vegan, including Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. and his family, Rosa Parks, Leo Tolstoy, and of course Gandhi himself. I feel like this topic was overshadowed by the promotion of the group itself, though, or maybe that's just because there was a somewhat combative person in the audience who wouldn't let the speaker finish (or even start, for awhile) what he was saying before arguing about veganism in general.
I've been effectively vegetarian since starting college, for various reasons too complex to explain in detail, but I will keep a long story short and say it was for health reasons. Suspending all value judgments, it doesn't surprise me that I haven't run into many other vegetarians even on a college campus, this being the Midwest and all. (Though maybe smaller schools that lean left more, like Kent State or Antioch might be different.) It hasn't really been too much of a problem for me since I started doing my own grocery shopping and cooking (I rarely eat out). Here are some of the options for vegetarian/vegan-friendly dining:
Campus Dining: Sprouts Cafe is a section of Kennedy Commons that has vegetarian/vegan cafeteria food The Marketplace has the best salad bar on campus, in my opinion (but that's not necessarily saying much) Fresh Express opened after I went off the campus dining plan, so I can't say anything about their options, but it's supposed to be healthier.
Off Campus: OSU campus is buffered along High Street by the Short North (to the south) and Clintonville (to the north), two neighborhoods that seem to have a fair amount of vegetarian, vegan, and otherwise health-conscious eating choices. These are the ones I've tried. Benevolence Cafe (near North Market) Northstar Cafe (2 locations conveniently bookending campus) Whole World Natural Restaurant and Bakery Aladdin's Eatery is not explicitly vegetarian, but Middle Eastern or Mediterranean places usually have some fairly good options Dragonfly Neo-V has upscale vegetarian food. I haven't been here yet since my college food budget doesn't stretch that far, but it looks very swanky and hopefully yummy.
In the latest dispatch from the theatre of the absurd, an OSU professor failed to make enough copies of an exam before it was distributed and completed by a portion of his students. He then proceeded to take the next logical step and give everyone in the class 100 percent. Yeah, I'm a little confused too. Here's the link to the full article in The Lantern.
I will admit that is a tough situation (but one that should never have happened). Once the exams are out, some dimwit (not realizing or caring that he is wrecking the curve for himself and everyone else) is sure to talk about it, so giving the same test is not an option. And it is really hard and time-consuming to write a new exam of the same difficulty, which is why professors really do need advance notice if you can't sit an exam at the normal time. So I really do understand the dilemma, but I think there could have been a better solution...like maybe a run to the copier?
Another test-related story, this time from my own life: My AED Econ 597.01 class was getting the midterm back today. My professor started writing up the statistics for this exam on the board, and he writes, "MEAN," pauses, then scribbles, "67.0." And you could hear a collective gasp/groan from the class of 75. At which point I literally snorted and thought, "Oh, you softies. I've taken exams where the average was 42." (A classmate later reminded me of the exam that averaged 30%.) Now I'm not making fun of econ majors...oh wait, yes, I am...but it just made me feel a little smug about my academic grittiness. They may be have their highfalutin intellectual grandstanding, but I think I've stared down worse things than they can even imagine. And let me be the first to disenchant anyone entering college of their 4.0 dreams (says the girl who is still striving for summa cum laude, but that's just me).
(Yes, I know Christmas was almost two months ago, bear with me...)
I heard an interesting hypothesis from my EEOB TA today. She said that winter is usually the best quarter grade-wise because students are coming off an extended period at home, during which time they either celebrated their good fall quarter grades or were dressed down by parental units for rather poorer ones. In any case, they return to school with a renewed sense of determination to do well (or better) academically.
...I don't know if I buy this. A quick Excel graph of my quarterly and cumulative GPAs (which I don't mind sharing, with the exact numbers removed) reveals that my lowest and highest quarterly GPAs both occurred during winter quarters. (Ironically my highest post-freshman year GPA was in the absolute worst quarter of my personal life.)
Winter quarters always seem the worst to me, no matter what the report card ultimately says. The excitement of a new school year is gone, the anticipation of summer is too weak to offset the winter slog, the weather is ghastly, and to cap it off, spring break is only a week long. A week is not nearly enough time to recuperate from the ten-week long haul, especially this year when I'll be jetting to Philadelphia the weekend before finals, then trucking down to Atlanta the weekend before spring quarter starts. In between I have a physical and dental cleaning appointment, in keeping with my once-quarterly health maintenance regime. For the rest of the time, I am barricading myself in my room with the pile of books that never seem to get read, photos that never seem to get scrapbooked, and perpetually messy desk that never, ever, seems to stay organized for very long.
(I'm in my fourth consecutive week of midterms and my brain, literally, feels like mush. And I have one more next week after which...I get to think about finals! Hurray!!)
I have to say I think I have the best professors this quarter that I've ever had in college. Which is not to say I haven't had good professors before, just that it seems like all my professors this particular quarter are pretty good. I've already written about the spate of interactivity during lectures, and all of them seem to have fun personalities too. My mol gen prof folded me an origami Xenopus (frog) in honor of the animal's development that we are studying. My EEOB prof gave out plastic parachute men and Play-Doh as prizes for our review recitation.
Most of them seem to genuinely be interested in their students' success, which people sometimes don't expect from a large research university. (There's probably only a few exceptions the sight of whom causes me to double over into the fetal position muttering, "Bringer of pain, bringer of pain!")
Which is why I get a little upset when students are not equally engaged in class. It drives me nuts when the professor asks a question, even one as simple as, "Is everything clear?" and gets no response. For starters, I think it is just plain rude not to answer someone who is asking you a question. And as a prospective teacher myself, I would want my students to tell me when something I say doesn't make sense, rather than see them fail a test later. As a teacher, it's painful to see your students not do well, because that means they're not learning and somehow or other, you're not doing your job well. I hate being "that kid" in lectures (and I try not to be annoying), but if I don't speak up and give the teacher some feedback, who will?
In other news, I've been accepted to OSU's Master of Education program. That's 2 for 3 so far, much better than my record of undergraduate acceptance decisions! :P I'm also going to Philadelphia the weekend before finals to interview for the Knowles Science Teaching Fellowship, which would give me significant tuition assistance, stipends and professional development for five years. Spring break will take me down to Georgia ("gonna eat a lotta peaches...") to visit Emory. Sure brings back a lot of memories from four years ago... where has the time gone?
I think all meteorologists should have to do a residency in central Ohio before being allowed to predict the weather anywhere else. In the past week, by my count, we have had the following phenomena:
-a high temperature of 66 degrees F accompanied by the melting of the Columbus ice sheets (Wednesday, capping off several days of highs in the 50s)
-torrential rain for a few hours and a few seconds of hail (yesterday)
-sustained 40 mph winds with gusts up to 60 mph (yesterday)
President Gee once told me that our chances of a snow day were zero on his watch. He has since had to eat his words, but I confess I can see where he's coming from. Losing that one day has put all my classes behind schedule and in a quarter-system school with only ten weeks, that may prove impossible to make up. I think it isn't just a matter of the lost class time but there is some momentum lost too, as the next time the class meet the professor has to review and recap and it's all a pain in the butt. As much as I would enjoy a day off some times, I think I would regret missing the instructional time even more. (Which probably just makes me crazy.)
Along the same lines, I did in fact find a second English class I wanted to take next quarter (596 - The "Book" Musical) and probably could have worked it into my schedule, but stopped short when I realized that would mean taking 19 hours in my last quarter, 5 of which are a studio art class and 5 of which are a creative writing workshop; I anticipate both classes to be fairly time consuming. (Now if I don't get into the workshop I'll of course take 596.) And I was talking to a classmate in my department about the AED Econ 597 I'm taking as my capstone and she asked, "Of all the 597 classes you could take, why did you pick that one?!" My answer: "Because I want to?" Sometimes I wonder if I'm the only person left on earth who likes learning for its own sake and did not come to university just as a stepping stone to a career. There are a lot easier ways to become a teacher (or even a doctor or MPH) than majoring in molecular genetics, but I stuck with it because it did, in fact, interest me. And maybe that's my problem, is that I'm interested in too many things, but I figure there is so much out there to be discovered, why not go and find out what it's all about? I may have said this before, but I guess the most important thing I learned in college was how to learn in general, and I hope to exercise that skill long after I graduate.
Monday, Feb. 2nd, is Dr. Gee's birthday. As a present to him, we want to see how many of you we can fit into the lobby of Bricker Hall for a surprise singing of "Happy Birthday."
We will be gathering at 10:30 a.m. If you are on campus, and in the neighborhood, please stop by. Hot chocolate will be on hand for those who brave the cold. (But please remember: it is a surprise!)
I was in class, so this is my tribute to President Gee instead. Speaking of pairing presidents with steamy sirens...
In other news, I have just scheduled my last quarter as an undergraduate at Ohio State. And I got accepted to Emory University's school of Public Health. :) AND it's like 30 degrees outside...HEAT WAVE!!!
